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‘Sometimes,’ Maulkin confided to Shreever quietly as they rested, ‘I lose my place in time. It seems to me that we have come this way before, done these things before, perhaps even shared these words before. Sometimes I believe it so strongly that I think today is actually a memory or a dream.
The other providers that moved within both the Lack and the Plenty were merely sources of easy feeding.
As long as we can think, we must remain here and seek for One Who Remembers. I know it in my stomach. If we are not renewed this time, we shall not be renewed. We and all our kind will perish and be ever after unknown in sea or sky or upon the land.’
Not just the Plenty and the Lack. The earth, the sky and the sea, the three parts of their sovereignty, once the three spheres of…something.
Once, lives ago, she had settled upon that arch, first flapping and then folding her massive wings back upon her shoulders. She had bugled to her mate of her joy in the morning’s fresh rain, and a gleaming blue dragon had trumpeted his reply. Once the Elderkind had greeted her arrival with scattered flowers and shouts of welcome. Once in this city under a bright blue sky…
others. He told himself that Sa reserved all judging for himself, for only the creator had the wisdom to be judge.
as Jani Khuprus hastened down it. As she strode along, she trailed her fingers down the long strip of jidzin set into the wall. Her touch triggered a faint light that moved with her down the dark hall that carried her ever deeper into the Elderlings’ labyrinthine palace.
She could well understand her ancestor discovering this and immediately making the Crowned Rooster his own heraldic device. The cock on the door was lifting a spurred foot threateningly and his wings were half-raised in menace. Every hackle feather on his extended neck shone. A gem set in his eye sparkled blackly. Elegance and arrogance combined in him.
‘What are you doing down here in the dark? Why aren’t you in the west corridor, supervising the workers? They have found another portal, concealed in a wall of the seventh chamber. Your intuition is needed there, to divine how to open it.’ ‘How to destroy it, you mean,’ Reyn corrected her. ‘Oh, Reyn.’ Jani rebuked him wearily. She was so tired of these discussions with her youngest son. Sometimes it seemed that he, who was most gifted at forcing the dwelling places of the Elderlings to give up their secrets, was also the most reluctant to employ his skills.
Neither do I think my people should continue to live in hiding and secrecy. Nor should we continue to plunder and destroy the ancient holdings of the Elderlings simply to pay for our own safety. I believe that instead we should restore and celebrate all we have discovered here. We should dig away the soil and ash that mask the city and reveal it once more to sunlight and moonlight.
Yes, I have spent much time in this chamber, and studied the markings the Elderlings left here. I have studied, too, that which we tumbled from inside the other “logs” that were once within the chamber.’ He shook his head, his coppery eyes flashing in the dimness. ‘Coffins. That was what you told me they were when I was young. But they are not. Cradles would be a truer name for them. Moreover, if knowing what I know now, I long to awaken and release the only one that is left, that does not mean I have fallen under her sway. It only means that I have come to see what would be right to do.’
You know the properties of wizardwood. A log, broken free of its contents, becomes free to take on the memories and thoughts of those in daily contact with it.
Let us expose this log to light and air. If no dragon queen hatches from within it, then I shall concede I was wrong. I will no longer oppose it being cut into timber to build a great ship for the Khuprus family.’
‘It makes no difference, Reyn, whether you oppose it or not. You are my youngest son, not my eldest. When the time comes, you will not be the one to decide what is done with the last wizardwood log.’
Let us pretend you are correct, and we have exposed this log to light and something has hatched from it. Then what? What assurances do you have that such a creature will feel kindly toward us, or regard us at all? You have read more of the scrolls and tablets of the Elderkind than any other man alive has. You yourself say that the dragons that shared their cities were arrogant and aggressive creatures, prone to take whatever they desired. Would you free such a creature to walk among us? Worse, what if it resented us, or even hated us, for what we unknowingly did to her kin in the other logs?
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‘You voice its thought, not your own. It reaches for you, clamouring for food. It believes we owe it food. It does not scruple to suggest your own flesh might satisfy it. Do not listen.’
‘He is family,’ she said simply. At Wintrow’s astounded look, she shrugged one bare shoulder at him. ‘That is how it feels to me. I get the same sense of connection. Not as strong as you and I have now, but undeniable.’
She opened herself to Kennit, shared this insight with him. Life went on. The loss of a leg was not an ending, only a course adjustment. While life pulsed in a man’s heart, all possibilities existed. Kennit did not need to fear. He could relax. It was going to be all right. He should rest now. Just rest. She felt the warmth of his expanding gratitude. The tensed muscles of his face and his back eased. Kennit took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He did not draw another one.
Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You can’t undo yesterday’s journey.’
But despite her waking disdain for him, he intruded into her dreams. In her dreams, the poignancy of his gentle strength seemed a safe harbour worth seeking.
Just as it took three generations for a liveship to quicken and come to cognisance, so it also took generations to pay for one. Only the Rain Wild Traders knew the source of the wizardwood lumber that made up the liveship hulls and figureheads.
Fecundity was the one treasure the Rain Wild folk lacked.
Wintrow wept for him. A sudden rush of feeling confused Kennit. The boy’s head was on his chest, making breathing even more difficult. He wanted to push him away, but the warmth of his hair and skin under his hand awoke a foreign longing as well. It was as if he himself were embodied afresh in this lad. He could protect this boy as he had not been protected himself. He had the power to stave off the destructive forces that had once torn his own life apart.
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She had called herself a whore. That was a man’s word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it. It roused a strange shivering of interest in him. She suddenly seemed a more powerful creature than she had just moments ago.
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Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.’
When we go to visit his family, he is going to show me the ancient city of the Elder race, where flame-jewels come from, and jidzin and other wonderful things. He has told me that there are places where you can go, and at a touch of your hand, you can light the chambers as they were of old. He says that sometimes he has even glimpsed the ghosts of the Elder folk coming and going on their errands. Not all can do that, only the very sensitive, but he says perhaps I have that skill.
And I wish, most of all, to solve the riddle of the dragon and the serpent.’ She smiled significantly at Althea as she said this. She tapped first the dragon earring she wore in her left ear and then the serpent that swung from her right.
‘Think hard,’ Amber begged. ‘Please. I have been so certain that you were the one. Certain dreams have shaken that conviction from time to time, but when I saw you again on the street, surety leapt up in me once more. You are the one. You have to know. Think. The dragon and the serpent.’ She leaned forward on the table and fixed Althea with a pleading stare.
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‘I need to think a moment. A wizardwood arrow. Is that what all this has been about? A wizardwood arrow? Shot by whom, and when? Why?’
She seemed interested in how its spittle had eaten through cloth and flesh, and nodded to herself at Brashen’s assertion that it was not a mere predatory attack, but a thinking creature bound on vengeance.
Warmth. Friendship. Release. Acknowledgement.’ ‘Acknowledgement ?’ ‘Ah, so you agree to the first three?’
I suspect they plunder the cities of the Elderlings of their treasures, and claim that ancient magic as their own. Bingtown and the Bingtown Traders act as a shield to conceal a people unknown to the rest of the world. Those people delve deep into secrets they cannot grasp. They dismantle the hard-won knowledge of another folk and time, and market it as amusing trinkets. I suspect they destroy as much as they pilfer.
‘God of Fishes!’ Keffria said, startling them all with the coarseness of the oath.
Sincure Faldin’s affront was genuine. The portly merchant drew himself up and took in a breath. His gaudy shirt filled like a sail bellying with wind. ‘You speak of a man who is all but engaged to my daughter. I have the highest regard for Captain Kennit, and am honoured that he gives me the exclusive privilege of selling his goods. I will hear no disparagement of him.’
It shocked him to discover his own physical strength. Worse, it felt good to knock the man down. He gritted his teeth, resisting the impulse to kick him. ‘Leave me alone,’ he warned Sa’Adar in a low growl. ‘Don’t talk to me again or I’ll kill you.’
Kennit smiled at him. He smoothed one long thumb across the boy’s tattoo. ‘Wipe it away,’ he commanded him. ‘On your face, it goes no deeper than your skin. You do not need to bear it on your soul.’ For five breaths more Kennit held him, until he saw a sort of wonder cross Wintrow’s features. Kennit placed a kiss on his brow, then released him.
They had come north when Maulkin had known the time was right. She Who Remembers should have greeted them. That one should have renewed all their memories, and should have led them through the next step. ‘But what would that be?’ she muttered softly to herself.
Then, from high above them, came the curiously pure notes of a voice raised in song. For a time, Shreever listened in awe. Each note was true, each word perfectly enunciated. It was not the random piping and roaring any lighthearted serpent might indulge in, but the glorious exultation of one called to sing. She unlidded her eyes. ‘Song of Simplicity,’
‘Who are you?’ he kept demanding of the lax green serpent. ‘You were a minstrel once, and an excellent one. Once you had a memory that could hold thousands of melodies and the words of those songs. Reach for it. Tell me your name. Just your name.’
‘Tellur,’ the green muttered. His gills fluttered a moment. ‘My name is Tellur.’
A massive cobalt, the largest of the other serpents, drew closer. He was easily a third longer than Sessurea, and twice his bulk. His maw gaped wide, tasting the water for toxins. He suddenly threw back his head and brought his own mane to a full bristle. ‘Kelaro!’ he bellowed. ‘I am Kelaro!’ His jaws worked hungrily, gulping in the diluted toxins and pumping them over his gills. ‘I remember,’ he proclaimed. ‘I am Kelaro!’
‘And you are Sylic. My friend Sylic. Once we were part of Xecres’ tangle.
‘We can sleep until we are ready to travel,’ Maulkin corrected him. ‘We have finished with providers. From now on, we hunt as befits serpents. A strong tangle need depend on no one’s largesse. When we do not hunt food, we hunt for One Who Remembers. We have been given a final chance. We must not squander
